Classics Unboxed: Ravenloft

I’ve been wanting to do a series here on the blog where I take old boxed sets and open them up to look at what’s inside, for the benefit of those of you that have either never seen them, or wish to take a nostalgia trip and check them out again.

This being October, and with Halloween being just around the corner, I thought it would be necessary to start with the “Ravenloft: Realm of Terror” boxed set for AD&D 2nd Edition.

Ravenloft has been making a lot of noise lately: a board game based on the 4e D&D rules was just released, and a 4e campaign setting/stand alone rpg was announced at Gencon this past summer. That game is slated for release in late 2011.

The original Ravenloft was a module for 1st Ed. AD&D published in 1983. It was written by Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance fame) and his wife Laura, who ran it for their players every Halloween for 5 years as a playtest before the module was published.

In a nutshell, 2nd Edition Ravenloft consists of the “Domains of Dread”, a pocket dimension where each domain is ruled by a Darklord. The Darklords are extremely evil beings trapped within their own domains, forever tortured by that which they desire the most in life. The boxed set mentions that there are over 30 of these domains. The most iconic of the Darklords is of course, our cover boy Count Strahd Von Zarovich, clearly modeled after Dracula. He is not the most powerful of the Darklords, but he was the first.

Player characters are transported to Ravenloft through the Ravenloft Mists, ethereal fog that manifests itself in the Prime Material Plane, and carries its victims to the Domains of Dread, where they then have to find a way out, usually forming the basis of adventures in the setting.

The “black box”, as it is commonly known as, was released in 1990 by TSR. The game design is credited to Bruce Nesmith, with Andria Hayday doing additional design work. So what’s in the box? Lets take a look:

144 page book detailing the setting and it also includes tips on creating Gothic horror for the game

4 poster maps

24 cardstock color sheets (castles, npc’s, spell charts, etc)

1 transparent hex overlay for determining distances on the maps

Here’s the actual box:

Here is the book:

Here are some of the cardstock sheets:

And the four poster maps (notice the transparent hex overlay on the bottom right picture):

So there you go, that’s what’s inside the “Ravenloft: Realm of Terror” black box for the 2nd Ed. AD&D game. In 1990, the box had a price tag of $18.00. Today, you can pick it up on Ebay for more or less the same price, if not cheaper.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and I look forward to opening more classic boxes. The next one will be everyone’s favorite plane hopping setting: Planescape.

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Thanks! This is pretty interesting as I haven’t ever seen this or really know much about D&D before 3.5.

I didn’t start playing D&D till a little over a year ago and that was with 3.5. I am fascinated by Ravenloft, having a few RL novels and hearing my D&D friends talk about their past adventures in the setting. Since we all pretty much switched to 4e, the likelihood of playing RL seemed grim. It’s nice to know that all hope is not lost.

I have to say this is my all time favorite campaign setting.
Sure it can lend itself to campy, cheesy vampire jokes, but it’s also a great place to tell some cool stories.

Some of the most memorable campaigns, I’ve played, and some of the best I’ve run were in the Ravenloft setting.

the 3.x edition of the age was interesting as it was done by white-wolf studios, the guys who do vampire the masquerade. From a rules standpoint they did some IMO great and cool things with the setting, but the setting itself, really was pretty true to form.

As I understand it there’s about a dozen different people who own various rights to what is needed to make Ravenloft a reality though, from old-school TSR people to some of the novel authors like Christie Golden. And so whenever they want to do it as a campaign setting you need “buy-in” as it were from like a dozen people and it’s not always easy to get, hence it’s reduction to a board-game in recent months

Oh man, I love you for doing this Newbie. It’s incredible how just seeing pictures of the box and its contents can make me nostalgic all over again. Thanks and I can’t wait for Planescape and any other boxes/books you take a look at!

Good leading article man, and a truly an awesometastic choice for the second one. The guys at Shared Weave Games un-boxed the original D&D Red Box (Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set) and had a go at it last Saturday.

Man… the memories that came flooding back. I not only remembered the people I played with, but the names of my old characters and the adventures we played through. Keep these coming!

Since classic gaming is something you’re into, check out my blog post on our rediscovery of the original Red Box. (My blog is PG 13, so keep that in mind when you choose the time to check it out.) http://tinyurl.com/28seow5

I would like to see Lankmhar setting (2nd Edition) make it into your review plans. This was always one of the founding set of books in the original novel based Sword and Sorcery pulp fantasy, which many lears later was made into a TSR created a 1 paperback setting book.

I almost picked up the new Castle Ravenloft board game because I have been playing a lot of Space Hulk lately and they seemed like they could easily fit into the same kinda evening. Never thought about trying to hunt down the old material though. I think I might go ahead and do that for Dark Sun for the campaign I am cooking up. Thanks for the idea mate.